‘The Etruscan Inferno: A Spatial and Synesthetic Reading by Gabriele D'Annunzio'

In the novel Forse che sì forse che no (1910), Gabriele D’Annunzio provides an interesting contamination of suggestions from Dante’s Inferno with ancient Etruscan art and, more generally, with the mystifying landscape of the Tuscan city of Volterra. In doing so, he productively combines his typical imaginative and synaesthetic style with scholarly and cultural trends of the time suggesting that a secret ‘blood memory’ might tie together Tuscan art of all times – from the Etruscans to Dante to the modern era. This essay explores D’Annunzio’s rendering of the ‘Etruscan Dante’ by setting it in the wider context of the reception of Dante and of ancient Italian art with a particular focus on the synaesthetic contaminations between suggestions from the text and the visual and tactual features of ancient Etruscan art.